Talk To Her Movie Review:


Talk to Her is one of those rare films that is so complex and different, but also simple in some sense. It is for sure a difficult film to discuss, but I will give it a shot. The story focuses on four different people, two male, two female, with vast similarities and differences. Benigno (Camara) is a male nurse and a momma's boy that took care of his ailing mother every moment of her last days. He is now taking care of Alicia (Watling), who has been in a coma for four years after being hit by a car. Alicia and Benigno hardly knew one another before she was in the accident, but he is definitely in love with her. By taking extra shifts at work, Benigno can always be with her. He cuts her hair, bathes her, dresses her, feeds her, and so forth. We know he does care for her, but he is also somewhat obsessed with her.

The other two characters are Marco (Grandinetti) and Lydia (Flores). Marco is a traveling writer that is constantly emotional, until he meets Lydia. She is a great bullfighter that is fearless and trying to get over her ex-boyfriend. The two are an unlikely, but cute couple that the audience immediately connects with. Shortly after their introductions, Lydia is gored in a bullfight and left in a coma a few rooms down from Benigno and Alicia.

Frustrated and confused Marco learns from Benigno that Alicia appreciates him taking care of her and more than anything talking to her even though she is unable to show it. Marco begins to follow Benigno's advice by taking care of Lydia and talking to her, which is the last thing that she asked him to do before she went into a coma.

This film is somewhat soap operish, somewhat experimental, masculine, feminine, it has issues of Freudism, as well as being disturbing and emotional. There are so many elements used by the film's writer/director Pedro Almodovar, that thinking about all of them might give you a headache. The film as a whole is brilliant in its own way; I haven't seen anything like this before. Almodovar, who just received Oscar nominations for his writing and directing with Talk to Her, doesn't hold back anything. To be honest, the immorality of the characters made me feel uneased throughout the last half of the film. I believe it is because I really got to know the characters, and then you feel let down or disappointed due to their unmoral actions. However, the parallelism that Almodovar creates from the four characters is beautiful. Even though he jumps in and out of the past to tell their stories, the film still isn't that hard to follow. Almodovar also takes moments to branch away from the characters to show other parallels. An example is the somewhat silly, but very significant silent movie that rings true to the theories of Sigmund Freud.

This isn't a film that I thought lived up to its hype, but the more I think about Talk to Her, the more I am intrigued by it. Its emotional complexity and element blending by Almodovar is striking, even if I saw some it as sappy and unarguable. Almodovar seems like a very precise filmmaker, and its reflected with his acting cast. Javier Camara and Dario Grandinetti have to be two of the best character actors in Spanish film. The two deliver very bold and emotion filled performances. Ditto for the two leading ladies. Leonor Watling and Rosario Flores spend a good amount of time bedridden in the film, but the flashbacks show their skills as actresses, especially Flores' brave work in the bullfighting scenes.

Talk to Her is really a film that I don't know everyone will get or understand. Almodovar's complexity and experimental work might drive some people to the wrong opinion. I think that the film is just so different, that one can't help but admire it. Outside of Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002), Talk to Her is the best foreign language film to be released last year.

Report Card Grade: B+

Joseph Tucker

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